Daughter

A young woman is kidnapped and inducted into a bizarre family as their new surrogate daughter. As she navigates through this twisted dynamic, awful secrets about the past are revealed, leading to even darker implications about the future.


Original Language: English
Director: Corey Deshon
Producer: Vivien Ngô, Tracy Chitupatham, Corey Deshon, Jes Vu
Writer: Corey Deshon


A Horror Movie Review by Rachel Willis

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Father. Mother. Son. Daughter.

It’s the quintessential nuclear family. In writer/director Corey Deshon’s feature debut, the nuclear family develops into a taut examination of manipulation and control.

Trying to fill a family void, Father (Casper Van Dien) holds a young woman captive in the garage. He informs her that she (Vivien Ngô) will henceforth be known alternately as Daughter or Sister.

Revealing anything more would ruin the conflict that develops around Daughter’s anticipation of what might happen next.
 
Van Dien unsettles as the patriarch of this family. His is one of the most disturbing portrayals in the film, as there’s an undercurrent of rage beneath the façade of loving dad. We know from the outset what he is capable of, but that doesn’t make watching any easier to bear.

And just what are Mother (Elyse Dinh) and Brother/Son (Ian Alexander) willing to do to preserve this facsimile of a “family?” When it comes to Daughter/Sister, each family member seems eager to manipulate others to suit their current needs.

As details are teased forth, there is clearly more to this family than what first appears. Father is the one in control, but how much of a hold does he have on this tenuous situation?

Setting the film almost entirely within the confines of the family home fosters a sense of isolation. Deshon creates constant confusion as to what exactly is going on outside. We’re given just enough information to keep us off-balance, a narrative decision that works brilliantly.

For the bulk of the film’s 95-minute runtime, the tension is unrelenting. Though one scene drags a bit, it’s brief so it doesn’t so much alleviate the tension as interrupt it.

For a first feature, this is a marvelously crafted work of psychological horror. Personally, I’m eager to see what Deshon does next.

Rachel Willis is a freelance writer living and working in Columbus, Ohio.
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She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rachel has written for both Screenrelish and MaddWolf and is currently working on her first novel. Aside from being and active writer, Rachel is an avid film watcher with a soft spot for horror movies. Rachel is also a member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association.

A neighbourhood is plagued by mysterious tragedies when a young man becomes the conduit for an unknown spirit, the 'AIYAI' which lures victims to their chilling fates. (IMDB)


Kiran (Kabir Singh) is a student, struggling to pay his rent and tuition and finding it just as hard to keep hold of a job. After losing his latest, one of his housemates finds him a new opportunity at a local crematorium. Despite a slightly bullish manager Darren (William Wensley) and a creepy groundsman (Craig Ingham) the job feels like a good opportunity for Kiran.
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However, it isn’t long before odd things start happening and, after a particularly bad morning at work for Darren, Kiran ends up possessed by a spirit out for revenge on the people who destroyed their life.


What follows is the disintegration of Kiran’s life as he unwittingly seeks revenge on behalf of the Aiyai, wreaking murderous havoc while his girlfriend, Sara (Tahlia Jade Holt) and housemate Felix (Vinod Mohana Sundaram) watch on, powerless to help.

The film follows a slightly bendy narrative, telling the story from a few different perspectives and starts about 1/3 of the way through before looping back to the events leading up to the opening scenes. After that it fills in the gaps around the Aiyai, where they have come from and identifying those who were responsible for its fate.


This is not a new approach to filmmaking by any stretch of the imagination, but it works well here and doesn’t deserve the criticism I have seen in some other reviews. While it would be easy to be deliberately obfuscatory until the end of the film using a device like this, Souls still takes time to fill in all the details but gives you enough to figure a lot out for yourself along the way.

This could open the movie up to allegations of predictability, but I don’t see that as a major criticism as you know what you are getting into early on in the movie and can then just sit back for the ride.

And that would be my main criticism of Souls, while being predictable isn’t an issue, it never quite ‘lifts off’ and takes you for the ride that you are hoping for. It is certainly creepy in places, but there are very few genuine scares to really drive you to turn the lights on.


Some of the acting and dialogue feels a little weak in places, but not enough to ruin the movie.

And, come on! If you are going to introduce a creepy groundsman who wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Scooby Doo, don’t leave us hanging, use him! Michael is sadly under used, other than a slightly comedic turn in two scenes, but he doesn’t even get to act as the crazy local the out-of-town kids choose to ignore despite his warnings!

On the whole it is a well-made independent film and a promising debut by the director. Definitely a sign of good things to come.
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Bulldog Film Distribution (@Bulldog_Film) presents Wrath of Souls on VOD from 29 May 2023..

Evil Dead Rise

A reunion between two estranged sisters gets cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.

Release date: 21 April 2023 

Director: Lee Cronin
Production companies: Ghost House Pictures, Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, Wild Atlantic Pictures, Pacific Renaissance
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures

A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

Deadites hit the big city in Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, the latest instalment in the old Sam Raimi demon possession franchise. As was true with its predecessors, blood will rain, viscera will spew, chainsaws will bite, and the dead will most definitely rise. Just don’t expect any jokes this time around.

We open, as usual, on a cabin. Despite the top-notch title sequence, though, this episode will not be a cabin-in-the-woods horror. Cronin, who’s credited with the script as well, takes the Necronomicon and all its secrets into an urban high rise to see what hell he can raise.

Beth (Lily Sullivan) has some troubling news and wants to lay low with her sister’s family for a bit. But her sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is about to have some real troubles of her own because an earthquake opened a hole from the parking garage to a vault beneath the building. That vault held a book and some vinyl.
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Cronin (The Hole in the Ground) tosses in some loving homages to the Raimi films. Who doesn’t love a demon POV shot?! In fact, he uses disorienting angles and shots throughout the film to beautifully bewildering effect. A fisheye-of-death through a peep hole is just one of the film’s many horrifying highlights.

Sutherland takes the most abuse as devoted mother turned chief Deadite, a role her lanky, angular frame is ideally suited to. She’s terrifying, but the most disturbing idea at play in this sequel is that children are fair game.

Cronin’s vision offers none of the slapstick, Three Stooges-esque humor of Raimi’s original trilogy. In fact, it leans far closer to the tone of Fede Alvarez’s underappreciated 2013 genre treasure, Evil Dead. And while this installment nods to the iconography of the original set is wonderful, Evil Dead Rise also recalls [Rec] and Joko Anwar’s Satan’s Slaves: Communion and even a little bit of Kubrick’s The Shining, Carpenter’s The Thing (or maybe Yuzna’s Society) – all exceptional horrors and worthy inspiration.

It’s also fun that Evil Dead Rise boasts an altogether new storyline, since so many films in the franchise are reworkings of earlier episodes. That storyline is somewhat slight, but what the film lacks in depth it makes up for with inspired visuals, solid casting, and so much blood.

Hope Madden is a writer and award-winning filmmaker living with her husband George and cat Velma in Columbus, Ohio. She writes what scares her, which worked out fine until she became a filmmaker and had to live what scared her for the duration of a shoot. Terrible decision. Her novella, Roost, was published in 2022 by Off Limits Press and her first feature film releases in late 2022.

Woman of the Photographs

A skilled digital photographer begins a twisted romance with a woman suffering from body dysmorphia.
Release date: 30 January 2021
Director: Takeshi Kushida

A Horror Movie Review  by Brandon Thomas

Vanity has been a part of human existence for ages. The standards of beauty come and go with the passage of time, but no matter where we are in history, people have sought to look attractive. In Woman of the Photographs, director Takeshi Kushida offers a compelling statement on the broad spectrum of beauty, and how either end of it can be equally damaging. 


Kai (Hideki Nagai) is a Japanese photographer who spends most of his days taking standard portraits and then endlessly photoshopping them for his vain clients. Only on the side does Kai get to dabble in a more artistic expression of his photography. While taking photos of insects in the forest, Kai stumbles upon Kyoko (Itsuki Otaki), an Instagram influencer who has just fallen from a tree trying to get the perfect photo. It’s not your standard meet-cute, and Kyoko certainly isn’t your standard model. After inviting herself for a ride home with Kai, Kyoko slowly integrates herself into Kai’s daily life. What starts as a symbiotically awkward relationship slowly morphs into something more sinister as both Kai and Kyoko become obsessed with a more destructive form of beauty. 

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What makes Woman of the Photographs so interesting is how delicately it dances around being a horror film. The first half of the movie feels more akin to a quirky indie drama than it does something in the genre realm. As Kai and Kyoko’s relationship deepens later in the film, the tendrils of horror finally make their appearance, calling to mind something close to Cronenberg-lite. 


The body horror in Woman of the Photographs isn’t as pronounced as that of David Cronenberg. No, Kushida’s desire seems to be to purposefully hold back on the excessive gore and instead force the audience to think about standards of beauty when it comes to surface-level imperfections. The horror emphasis is less on Kyoko’s wound itself and more the obsessiveness in which Kai and Kyoko marvel upon it. 


There’s also fascinating commentary on the state of modern Japan and the isolation many of its citizens feel. While not exactly suffering from hikikomori (the Japanese phenomenon of extreme isolation), Kai’s relationship with other people is often felt only through the viewfinder of a camera. On the opposite end is Kyoko, who’s only connection with others – outside of Kai – is through her Instagram page where she obsesses over each and every shot of herself that she posts. 

Woman of the Photographs slowly unravels from a quirky first act to a much more sinister final half. For those with the patience, the methodical descent into Japanese body horror will be well worth the investment.

Brandon Thomas works in Central Ohio’s prolific library industry.
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When not worrying about circulation related matters, Brandon is usually re-watching John Carpenter’s filmography for the 100th time or musing about Star Wars. He once tried to care about French new wave, but it didn’t stick. Brandon is also a Central Ohio Film Critics Association member.

The Pope’s Exorcist

Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist for the Vatican, battles Satan and innocent-possessing demons. A detailed portrait of a priest who performed more than 100,000 exorcisms in his lifetime.

Release date: 7 April 2023
Director: Julius Avery
Story by: R. Dean McCreary; Chester Hastings; Jeff Katz;
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing

A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

Fair warning: I do tend to get in the weeds with these Catholic horror movies.
So, The Pope’s Exorcist.

Russell Crowe plays Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who was an honest to God exorcist based in the Vatican. He founded the International Association of Exorcists. For real, not in this movie. In this movie, he gets called to Spain to help an expat American family whose son is possessed.

The Pope’s Exorcist is the third possession film Michael Petroni has penned. Is that good news? He also wrote The Secret Lives of Alter Boys, the TV series Messiah, and The Chronicles of Naria: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (How is that relevant, you say? Aslan is lion Jesus. FYI.) Is the point that he knows his stuff? Or that most of those scripts aren’t very good?

Co-writer Evan Spilotopoulos has also written lukewarm Catholic horror (The Unholy). What you can expect from their script (also co-written by R. Dean McCreary in his first holy horror) is very little that’s truly original.
This is where Crowe comes in.

Crowe is great. He’s funny, clever, looks amazing on his little Vespa. Alex Essoe as the possessed boy’s mother Julia is stiff, her acting even less believable when she sits across the table from Crowe, who’s enjoying every moment of his own performance. As will you.

Franco Nero plays the pope. This marks the second time Nero has played the pope, which is hilarious to me. Anyway, that’s fun. And Ralph Ineson (The VVitch) is the voice of the demon, which is the most authentic casting ever.

The Pope’s Exorcist directly mentions that the Catholic church has been the cause of two of the greatest and longest lasting sources of human misery in history: the Inquisition and the history of rampant, institutional sexual abuse. Credit for that. The film’s resolution can’t be discussed because of spoilers, but battling your demons has rarely felt less feminist.

The Pope’s Exorcist doesn’t hold a candle to the diabolical military fun of director Julius Avery’s Overlord. There are too few surprises, the FX are so-so at best, and the outcome is never really in question. Plus, it treads too heavily on the popularity of The Conjuring’s universe of “this must be true because some Catholic person wrote it down, so let’s create a Holy Water franchise.”

Is it better than Petroni’s 2011 dumpster fire, The Rite? It is. Is it another movie that says men throughout the history of Catholicism have done evil things to the powerless around them, but the only way to correct this is to believe other men in the Catholic church? It is.
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But Crowe is having a blast, and it’s infectious.

Hope Madden is a writer and award-winning filmmaker living with her husband George and cat Velma in Columbus, Ohio. She writes what scares her, which worked out fine until she became a filmmaker and had to live what scared her for the duration of a shoot. Terrible decision. Her novella, Roost, was published in 2022 by Off Limits Press and her first feature film releases in late 2022.

​Renfield
Renfield, the tortured aide to his narcissistic boss, Dracula, is forced to procure his master's prey and do his every bidding. However, after centuries of servitude, he's ready to see if there's a life outside the shadow of the Prince of Darkness.

Release date: 14 April 2023 
Director: Chris McKay
Story by: Robert Kirkman
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Based on: Characters; by Bram Stoker
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A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden and George Wolf

So, two Robot Chicken writers and the guy who directed The Lego Batman Movie got together and said, I bet they’d let us make a movie if we could get Nic Cage to play Dracula.

I mean, maybe it didn’t go down like that, but it could have and if it did, it worked. They totally made a movie with a very saucy Nic Cage as Dracula. And a saucy Nic Cage is the best Nic Cage.

Through inspired cinematic homages, we’re whooshed through a little backstory. Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult – who played Cage’s son in Gore Verbinski’s 2005 dramedy The Weather Man) is an ambitious real estate agent who sells his soul to Dracula. Fast forward 150 years or so and he’s grown weary of the co-dependent relationship.

The blood sucker’s insatiable appetite means that his reluctant manservant is forever finding a new place for them to lay low. Right now, it’s New Orleans, where an angry cop (Awkwafina) is fighting a losing battle with a corrupt city.

But enough about the story. Honestly, if you’re here for the story, you’ve come to the wrong place. Not that co-writers Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman do a poor job. They do a fine job of serving Cage opportunities to ham it up, while director Chris McKay wows with Story of Ricky levels of carnage, except here it’s intentionally funny.

And the blood-splatter here is much more accomplished then Ricky, as it’s woven through a spicy gumbo of action set pieces that mix Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead with a dash of Matrix. But as fun as this all often is, the film never fully commits to any of its multiple directions.

There’s at least one bloody toe in waters that send up rom-coms, satirize narcissistic relationships and homage a classic horror character while it’s also modernizing the themes that built him.

But experiencing Count Nicula alone is worth it. Plus, Hoult is perfect as the put-upon sad boy with access to anti-hero superpowers and Awkwafina can wring plenty of humor from simply telling a guy named Kyle to F-off.
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Renfield might be bloodier than you expect, but it’s just as much fun as you’re hoping for. Call it bloody good fun.

​Hope Madden is a writer and award-winning filmmaker living with her husband George and cat Velma in Columbus, Ohio. She writes what scares her, which worked out fine until she became a filmmaker and had to live what scared her for the duration of a shoot. Terrible decision. Her novella, Roost, was published in 2022 by Off Limits Press and her first feature film releases in late 2022.

George “Screen” Wolf is co-founder and writer for maddwolf.com. He’s also  film critic for Saga Communications radio (25 markets across the US), Columbus Underground and UK Film Review.

In Columbus, Ohio, you can catch George on TV every Friday morning on ABC6/Fox28’s Good Day Columbus.

George is a member of the Columbus Film Critics Association, and lives in Grandview Heights with his wife, Hope Madden. Their son Donovan lives in L.A. George enjoys music, politics, his Harley, sports, travelling, and, oh yeah, movies!

Contact George at maddwolf95@gmail.com.

Follow George on Facebook and Instagram @maddwolfcolumbus and on Twitter @maddwolf

The Menu - A Response by Kit Power 

The film, penned by Will Tracy and Seth Reiss, "focuses on a young couple who visits an exclusive destination restaurant on a remote island where the acclaimed chef has prepared a lavish tasting menu. 
Release date: 18 November 2022
Director: Mark Mylod

Massive spoilers. I’m going to assume you’ve seen it. If you haven't, go see it. It’s brilliant.


Like with my recent experience with The Banshees of Inisherin, The Menu left me feeling just a little overwhelmed; like that movie, it’s a tightly focussed piece, with a relatively small cast, claustrophobic setting, and a crawling sense of menace and escalation. Also like that movie there’s an absolute ton going on under the hood; enough that I was somewhere at a loss to know where to start.


Twitter to the rescue; a friend and Patreon backer, seeing that I was planning an essay, asked me on that platform if I thought the movie was primarily a horror movie or a comedy. Their contention was that it was primarily a comedy, due to the delivery, pacing, and the structure of the reveals.


So let’s start there. The easy answer to ‘is The Menu primarily horror or comedy?’ is, of course, ‘Yes’, but that answer deserves a bit of unpacking.


Back in the Summer of 2021, I was lucky enough to interview legendary author Chuck Tingle, on the occasion of the release of his debut horror novella, Straight, and one of the topics we covered were the connections between horror, comedy and erotica. You can click through for the full exchange, but Dr Tingle said, in part, “But dang thing is ROMANCE and also jokeman way of COMEDY is a lot like way of HORROR because these are genres of tension and release and timing so if you understand these things you can understand them across all kinds of stories i think.”


So, yes, absolutely, The Menu is is a comedy movie; structurally, formally, it’s almost like the final, idealized form of a shaggy dog story; one that, like the menu itself, goes through a series of increasingly absurd iterations, each dish peeling back a layer of understanding, each delivering its own secondary gag (in either or both senses of the word) while feeding into the wider narrative and inevitable punchline. And of course, within that, it’s aware of the inherent pomposity of the films proposition; one of this things that really hit me about this movie was the interrogation of the relationship between art and commerce; particularly, the artistic drive to push oneself, allied to a system that values wealth and exclusivity above all.


Plus, you know, it’s damn funny in places. The movie does a great job skewering  the kinds of people wealthy enough to eat in a $1200 taster menu restaurant that’s located upon its own island, for crying out loud. So we’ve got the washed-up movie star, the obnoxious tech bros, the ultra rich regulars, the pretentious food critic and her obsequious editor, and the super-rich foodie-as-religion dude and his ‘girlfriend’. And as I type that out, does that start to feel more like a collection of modern archetypes than actual characters? Maybe, but the sad truth is, by and large, the ultrarich are a cliched bunch at this point. I remember watching Succession and occasionally thinking they couldn’t really be quite this awful… and then along comes the weapons grade idiocy of the Musk takeover of Twitter, and you realize that show was, if anything, lowballing it.


So, sure, the setup screams parable, and (as well as being comedy, as well as being horror) it absolutely is; but that doesn't mean any of the actors are playing it that way, I don’t think. Even Fiennes, who in some ways has the toughest part to play, and the totally-in-control-yet-increasingly-clearly-unhinged head chef, treats the role with respect, inhabiting this driven, incredibly talented and utterly broken man. I believed in him. I believed in all of them.


So is it comedy? Sure. But as Dr. Tingle notes, comedy and horror are both games of tension and release, setup and punchline. Elsewhere, I’ve opined that the only real difference is whether or not you wince or laugh when the punchline arrives.


And frequently, The Menu made me do both.


A great example of this is the sequence in course 4 when the sous chef shoots himself in the head. The last three courses have laid the groundwork, with the chef’s storytelling becoming increasingly disturbing, and of course the third dish featuring tortillas with laser printed images on them that expose various misdeeds of the guests. So as an audience we are, like the guests, already feeling the ground start to shift under our feet, a sense of unease at this isolated location, enclosed environment, and a perhaps not-entirely-stable host.


Still, the moment is exquisitely delivered; the monologue build, the arrangement of items over the plastic sheeting the men stand on. ‘He is good, but he’ll never be great’ intones the chef, and I felt that one down to my boots, you can bet… It’s funny, because watching it, I remember thinking simultaneously that he was going to kill himself and that he wasn’t, the two equally strong convictions based on the shape of what we’d seen, inevitability vs surprise…. And then, thanks to the brilliant way the shooting is delivered, with the sudden drawing of the curtains over the kitchen and some exquisite quick cuts in the edit, it made me jump anyway.


And yeah, I laughed. I also gasped. I was delighted and horrified, all at one.


Delighted because I’d predicted it, and because it meant I was in for that kind of story; a slow burn, but not too slow. This movie wasn’t just here to sneer or imply, it was here to slap, to bite. Good. Horrified, because even as I had very little sympathy for most of the customers of the restaurant, like a lot of my favorite movies and books, I was absorbed enough in the story that I felt in some way that I was in that room, sat at one of the tables; that I was both captive and witness. The dynamics at play here are absolutely elemental - power, control, isolation. An inversion of what the guests must have imagined their entire lives was the natural order of things; a situation and circumstance where not only is their money no good, it might even be what kills them.


So, is The Menu primarily horror, or comedy? Yes.


There’s a lot more we could unpick; this is a movie that has such a clear idea of what it’s doing that each scene, each line, each shot is as meticulously planned as the titular Menu. But I want to focus in on one character in particular, because she serves as both the key for the audience to unlock the story-behind-the-story, and creates an incredible moment of tension towards the films climax.


So, let’s talk about Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot.


It’s a brilliant performance, let’s just start there. The exact nature of her relationship to uber-foodie Tyler isn't immediately clear, but what is clear is that there’s something off between them from the start; we quickly learn that she wasn’t his original guest, but even before then, from the way they interact, particularly when he leans on her to stop smoking out of fear of ruining her palette, it’s clear both that they don’t know each other well, and there’s a power imbalance between them. I can’t remember if it’s stated explicitly in those opening scenes, but it’s almost immediately apparent that he’s paid for her ticket. And once the boat lands, there’s an awkward moment when the greeter observes she wasn’t the original guest; it’s a moment that’ll have a lot of narrative significance later, of course (this is not a movie that create moments of weirdness for the sake of it, almost all of the initial scenes touring the island have some kind of wider significance or payoff later in the film) but even on it’s own terms, the moment underlines the point; Margot doesn’t belong here.


Initially, I think I’d imagined this was to give us an audience identification figure; someone who, like (99.99% of) us, doesn’t move in these kinds of exclusive circles, can comment on the absurdity, ask the awkward and/or ignorant questions. And sure, there’s some of that; especially with Tyler’s fanatical zeal for the project at hand causing him to overshare/geek out in dramatic fashion.


Actually, that’s probably with a quick closer look as well, because my default sympathies will normally be with the person doing the geeking out. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, give me a person or character who’s absolutely obsessed with some object‘d’art, be it a pop culture juggernaut or something utterly obscure, I am there for it. I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than enjoying someone else’s sincerely expressed joy; it’s a big part of why I make and listen to the kinds of podcasts I do. I generally find obsessive overenthusiasm kind of endearing and delightful


But Tyler? Tyler squiks me the fuck out.


And it’s not hard to see why; it’s the point where enthusiasm bubbles over into fanaticism, where engagement goes from personal joy to a kind of moral absolutism; this is not merely The Coolest Thing but has become The Way. Tyler embodies this throughout, long before he is revealed as knowing the planned ending for the evening; the way his condescending flattery in the face of Margot’s pointed and irreverent conversations crumbles, to be replaced with an increasingly furious insistence that she fall in line with his opinions. There’s a beautiful irony here, in that he repeatedly accuses her of ‘ruining it’, while all the time surreptitiously taking photos of the food, which is strictly against the rules of the restaurant. Tyler represents what seems to be the case for a lot of ultra rich people; a central void that can never be filled, no matter how much money is poured into it. This should be of little if any comfort to the rest of us, of course, to know that the billionaire class that are fast pushing the planet past the point where it will be livable are profoundly miserable people, as a whole; still, I can’t deny that Tyler’s suicide (following his predictably epic failure in the cook’s role) was one of the more grimly satisfying moments in the film. May all the tyrants of greed relieve us thus of their presence, while there’s still time to turn this sorry mess around.


But back to our Margot. What we learn, and it’s not a galloping shock, given the way her relationship with Tyler is portrayed, is that she’s an escort, paid by Tyler to accompany him in place of his girlfriend. It’s a further moment of revelation of Tyler’s overall character, especially when we get the reveal that he knew everyone is going to die at the end. What’s fascinating is what the movie does with that; she’s given a private audience with the chef, and he explains to her that they’re all going to die, but offers her a choice; does she wish to die with the servers, or with the eaters? It’s a fascinating exchange, both actors delivering exquisite performances, with the moment when Fiennes says ‘believe me, I know a bad customer when I see one’ falling with particular impact.


What I find fascinating is what happens after that; in one of the few ambiguous moments in an otherwise very controlled film, the chef, deciding for himself that Margot is one of the team, sends her out to retrieve a barrel from the smokehouse. It's an odd moment, because he blames Elsa, the Maitre D’, for the missing barrel, and it’s clear from her face that he’s done her an injustice. And I can’t quite work out what his motives are, in the moment, save it being, perhaps, a test of Margot’s commitment to her new role. Regardless, I found Margot’s decision to instead investigate the chef house exhilarating, if stressful; and of course, in doing so, she breaks the paradigm of guest/staff entirely, choosing instead the role of outlaw, which gives her the clues she needs for her escape.


In closing, I do want to talk a bit about Margot's escape, because I loved it narratively and I’m still picking over the symbolism of it. Obviously, it’s hella badass the way she puts together the story of the chef’s memorabilia in his house; in particular how she notices the bigger and more exclusive the restaurant, the more miserable he looks, and then leverages that knowledge ruthlessly to denounce the pretentiousness of the whole thing, hitting the chef where, despite all the postering, he still lives, by telling him she’s still hungry.


What I particularly enjoyed about the scene was the sense that the chef understands what Margot is up to; that he may even be rooting for her to find the way through. He does accept her as an equal, after all; one of the servers, and the way she gets through is by recalling their shared connection to poor peoples’ comfort food. I wanted to punch the air when she asked to make the burger to go; it felt genuinely uplifting, like she’d earned her way out of that awful room through a mixture of courage, deceit, and honesty.


But I also can't get away from the choice of the cheeseburger.


Because, absolutely, it’s street food, a tasty, fatty, calorie bomb of protein. And, to be clear, I’m a fan.


But it’s also one of the things killing us.


I don’t mean so much in the Supersize Me way, but more in the fact the current scale of beef production, and the associated carbon and methane footprint, is a non-trivial contributor to the climate apocalypse that is on track to kill billions, if not all of us, over the next 100 years.


And I feel like, in a film this good, that can’t be accidental. I feel like that final shot of the movie, with Margot watching the restaurant burning to the ground before taking another hungry bite from the burger is something both uplifting and melancholic; life-affirming and nihilistic all at once.


Because the industrial mass production of beef is absolutely a big part of the problem, even if, like me, you don’t have a particular issue or concern about the animal welfare arguments. But that infrastructure is far beyond the power of individual consumers to influence, at this point, and in point of fact is heavily subsidized by so-called democratic governments across the world ( do you remember voting for using taxpayer’s money to fund the destruction of the planet? Because I don’t). And yet. Here we are


Well, fuck it, The Menu seems to say. Fuck it all. Eat the burger, and watch the billionaires burn.


Might as well.


KP
12/3/23

LOLA (2022)
Directed by Andrew Legge
Written by Andrew Legg and Angeli Macfarlane


1940, Thom and Mars have built a machine, LOLA, that can intercept radio and TV broadcasts from the future


A Horror Movie Review by Mark Walker 

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT has a lot to answer for. While I am fairly certain it was not the first found footage film ever made, it was certainly one that thrust the format into the limelight and spawned hundreds of variously good and bad copies and homages over the years. To such an extent that there may have been a time when we were pretty much fatigued with found footage and had had enough. But things go in cycles and, whether it is Westerns, Zombies or Vampires, trends come and go and eventually we always circle back around.

I think LOLA has come at the perfect time. While found footage hasn’t ever really gone away, it doesn’t feel like it is as prevalent as it once was but is still throwing out the odd gem here and there to keep fans happy and to keep the fires burning. Take last year’s DEADSTREAM for example. It very clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, Blair Witch being the obvious one, but it thrust the found footage genre into the modern world, using an internet streamer as the catalyst for a story that unfolds through recordings from a haunted house livestream.

It was the same, but different.

MEAN SPIRITED did a similar thing with another modern take on found footage through streaming, so perhaps that is the direction a new wave of found footage movies should take?

Well, LOLA, thinks otherwise.

While LOLA has taken all the elements of the found footage format, it has used them in a slightly different way, exploring a different angle. In contrast to DEADSTREAM and MEAN SPIRITED, LOLA eschews modern technology and goes into the past to explore time travel, the rise of Hitler and the advance of Nazism in the early 1940s. In many ways it almost isn’t quite found footage, more of a message edited and sent back in time by one of the main characters to warn themselves.

Thom (Emma Appleton) and Mars (Stefanie Martini) are orphans who raised themselves in the 1930s, tucked out of sight in a grand country house away from any outside influence. Martha is the gentle, caring heart of the pairing, while Thom is the colder, more pragmatic genius of the two. While they are isolated together, they build LOLA, a steampunk-esque contraption that allows them to intercept radio and TV signals from the future.

At first their invention is an exciting and fun toy that allows them to explore their love of music as they watch footage of the 60s and 70s. They discover musical heroes like Bob Dylan and David Bowie years before they ever became famous or were even born.

However, with the changing political climate in Europe, it isn’t long before the fun stops and the very real potential for LOLA is discovered - intercepting future transmissions from the Nazis. This unprecedented level of intelligence and insight into enemy plans and tactics allows Thom and Mars to work with an initially suspicious British Army to begin to turn the tide of the war.

Of course, the joy is short lived and, as things start to turn bad, allegiances are tested and Thom and Mars discover just how bad things get when you mess around with time. If only they had picked up a few time travel films with LOLA to warn them off before things got bad!

LOLA is presented, found footage style, through wobbly home recordings made by the sisters, newsreel footage and army records. It cleverly uses stock footage to give a sense of period to the film, but also doctors it to include characters from the film. The film looks rough and shaky in places, but this sits perfectly with the time period and the style of film, it works effectively to draw you in and imagine you really are looking at images from the 1940s.

The acting and direction on show here is also perfect for the style and period of the film and Appleton and Martini are utterly convincing and enthralling as sisters responsible for literally changing the course of history. Throw in a soundtrack by Neil Hannon and you know you are on to a winner.

Like all Found Footage films, there are one or two times when you might think, ‘why are they filming that?’ but, by the time you realise, LOLA has drawn you in and you are not really going to care.

There are many influences at play here including material like PRIMER and THE MAN IN THE HIGHCASTLE to name just two. It explores the potential wonder of time travel as well as, like any good time travel tale should, the downfalls or knowing what is going to happen and the consequences of messing with fate. It is that conflict that allows films like LOLA to straddle both their parent genre of Sci-Fi and also Horror and the consequences for Mars and Thom really do become horrifying. A nod to THE SHINING confirms this broad depth of influence on the filmmakers.

There isn’t a lot more you can say about LOLA without risking spoilers, and I don’t want to do that. While I had an inkling how things were going to play out, there were still a few surprises with LOLA, and I was definitely caught up in the storytelling so much so that the 79 minute running time flew past without me ever once looking at my watch or fidgeting.

There is an ever revolving argument on social media every time the latest Hollywood Blockbuster is released to a deluge of bitterness bemoaning the lack of originality in the cinema and how Hollywood needs to get “back to its roots.” Let Hollywood do its thing, it’s a business and will always chase the money but, if you think there is a lack of originality and interesting stuff out there, you really need to look harder. LOLA is a fantastic, shining example of low-budget, independent film-making that can stand toe to toe with the big guns. There is room for all levels of filmmaking, let’s just make sure to support Indie film as much as enjoying the bombast of the latest Hollywood cash cow. (And don’t get me wrong, I love a good blockbuster!)
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LOLA is out in cinemas from 7th April, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Get out, see it, and enjoy!

Malum

A rookie police officer takes the last shift at a newly decommissioned station in an attempt to uncover the mysterious connection between her father's death and a vicious cult. Throughout the night, she finds herself barraged by terrifying supernatural events while unveiling the truth behind her family's twisted past.
Release date: 31 March 2023 (USA)
Director: Anthony DiBlasi

A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

Equal parts Assault on Precinct 13 and The Shining by way of Charles Manson, Anthony DiBlasi’s Malum is a quick, mean, mad look into the abyss.

Jessica Sula stars as a rookie cop whose first night on the job is a babysitting gig, so to speak. The new station is up and running and all she has to do is sit tight at the old station, redirect anyone who stops by, and wait for morning. So far, so Carpenter.

Jessica (her character’s name, as well) actually requested this stint because her dad, a hero, ended his career in this very building and she just wants the two careers to overlap, if only for one shift. But the cult that her father put an end to one year ago tonight has designs on Jessica.

DiBlasi is reimagining his own 2014 flick Last Shift, although it feels more like a riff on Carpenter’s 1976 Precinct 13 than anything. Regardless, what the filmmaker does is confine the audience along with our hero in a funhouse.

As the film wears on its nightmarish vibe intensifies. Weird characters and genuinely unsettling scenarios play out, some of them predictable but most of them surprises. The jump scares work, the gore plays, and the creature effects are top notch.

Inspired supporting turns from Natalie Victoria, Sam Brooks and Kevin Wayne keep the bizarre tensions building and Sula’s grounded, understated hero holds the mayhem together well
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Malum gets nuts, exactly as it should. Though it never feels genuinely unique, it manages to avoid feeling derivative because of DiBlasi’s commitment to the grisly madness afoot. The result is a solid, blood soaked bit of genre entertainment fully worthy of your 92 minutes.  

Hope Madden is a writer and award-winning filmmaker living with her husband George and cat Velma in Columbus, Ohio. She writes what scares her, which worked out fine until she became a filmmaker and had to live what scared her for the duration of a shoot. Terrible decision. Her novella, Roost, was published in 2022 by Off Limits Press and her first feature film releases in late 2022.​

Check out Hope's Podcast here : https://soundcloud.com/frightclub

And for more film reviews from Hope check out 

Maddwolf 
https://maddwolf.com/
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Attachment
A couple's new relationship is interrupted by mysterious happenings in their new flat, provoked by one of the women's disapproving mothers.
Release date: 28 July 2022 (Denmark)
Director: Gabriel Bier Gislason

A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

There are not nearly enough horror films based in Jewish folklore. Have you ever seen a dybbuk movie? You should. So far, I’ve seen three – Marcin Wrona’s beautiful 2016 haunting, Demon; Keith Thomas’s 2021 horror, The Vigil; and writer/director Gabriel Bier Gislason’s latest, Attachment.

The thing about dybbuk stories is that I’ve never seen one go well for anyone. Fun!
On the surface – and even just below – Attachment is an astute observation on being new to the family, particularly in a situation where the relationship itself is probably not that welcome. All families are weird, but they are weird in such individual ways. Gislason picks that scab effectively, as does his cast.

Josephine Park is Maja, a Danish actress best known – really, only known – for playing Santa’s Elf in a long-defunct TV series. She literally runs into Leah (Ellie Kendrick) at a bookstore. Leah is in from London doing some research, the two fall quickly in love, and after Leah is injured during a seizure, Maja offers to return with her to London and her mother’s care.

There is something quietly astute about the way Gislason sets up the dynamic: the willfully oblivious love interest, the domineering parent (Sofie Gråbøl) unwilling to be gracious, and the insecure new love unsure how to make herself fit into the family. All of it feels authentic, even if the stakes and weirdness are clearly ratcheted up a few notches.

Attachment delivers slow-burn horror that repays close attention but never falls to gimmickry. Yes, the situation is absurd, but everyone behaves in a way that is rooted in real-world expectations and experiences.

When the film changes its point of view, you realize where its compassion really lies. Attachment is a nightmare about parenting, about releasing your everything – your beautiful, tender baby – into a vast and brutal world. At the center of the entire nightmare is love, of course, because there is no real horror unless love is at stake. It’s that knowledge that makes the film hurt.
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Hug your mom.

​Hope Madden is a writer and award-winning filmmaker living with her husband George and cat Velma in Columbus, Ohio. She writes what scares her, which worked out fine until she became a filmmaker and had to live what scared her for the duration of a shoot. Terrible decision. Her novella, Roost, was published in 2022 by Off Limits Press and her first feature film releases in late 2022.